Hollowfall (Master of Wills, Band 1) - Softcover

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Chapter 1
Razorcorp Slums
It isn’t murder if the person you kill is an echo.
The words of her handler looped through Sadia’s mind. She held the heavy gun between her hands, but it bounced up and down because her hands were resting on her knee and her knee wouldn’t stop jigging like a techtoo needle. She told herself murder was not going to happen. Part of her believed it. The rattling sound of the gun’s moving parts on vibrate made a counterargument.
She waited inside the storage container that had been converted into a six-bedroom condominium, thanks to the blankets that had been hung on ropes to compartmentalize the space. The amenities included a solar/kinetic-powered LED lamp, complete with fringed shade, bolted to the ceiling upside-down. There was also a puddle of standing water on the floor and a round hole in the corner that smelled like a sewer. Mattresses lay piled on top of shipping palettes and the one-and-only chair was made from pieces of rectangular fruit crates that had been nailed together crosswise to fashion a seat, of sorts.
Sadia had seen worse.
Her contact was ten minutes late. Sadia’s knee jigged faster. Antsy was not a feeling she enjoyed. She was here, actually, to do a favor for her contact. That was half the reason anyway. The echo wanted to move up in her faction and if Sadia helped her complete her task, the android might be promoted. Sentient androids had ambitions just like everyone else and Sadia liked helping people.
Sadia was here to help herself, too. The Dawnlight faction would pay Sadia top credit for the Razorcorp datathreads she was supposed to collect from the echo. Her handler had given her the antique revolver just in case somebody besides her contact showed up. There were all kinds of dangerous street sliders and gutterpunks who might wander in. There was also the possibility that the echo had other intentions. A substantial number of echoes were openly in favor of eradicating humankind. If the echo attacked her, Sadia would have the gun.
Her handler had told her to come in, sit down, and wait, but Sadia felt a need to do something besides sit. Dawnlight had promised to make her a recruit if she did what she was told, but again, antsy was turning to intolerable. She told herself to be patient. If she was patient, she’d be able to sleep in a faction rack instead of her hidden closet tonight, which was the aforementioned worse place than this.
She sucked in a sigh and let it out.
On the floor, navigating around the puddle, a cockroach skittered toward her. It stopped just outside the reach of Sadia’s shoe. The cockroach was all black. Black body. Black legs. Black antennae. The antennae flashed tiny blue lights. Only the tips. Twin flashes that blinked. One-two-three. Then again. One-two-three.
What the hazy-crazy-blazes?
The roach turned around and skittered to the other side of the puddle where it stopped and turned again.
Blink-blink-blink.
Blink-blink-blink.
As if it were sending a message.
Fol-low-me.
Fol-low-me.
Unless it was saying something else entirely.
Come-and-die.
Come-and-die.
Sadia shook her head, clearing her mind. Her caution over the past two years had kept her alive, but a couple of blinking lights didn’t have to mean anything. She watched the roach disappear under the edge of the blanket that divided the rest of the container from the space Sadia sat in.
Yes. Go away.
Where was her contact?
The roach reappeared. Blink-blink-blink. Blink-blink-blink.
Sadia considered using one of her six bullets on the roach. If she took a shot, however, it would be loud inside the small space and she might scare off her contact, now fifteen minutes late, and defeat the purpose of her being here.
She stood up.
Screw this.
She didn’t care what her handler had told her. Fifteen minutes was Sadia’s limit for antsy and if her contact wasn’t here by now, maybe she wasn’t all that ambitious.
The roach turned around again and Sadia followed the insect deeper into the container. It zig-zagged erratically through the adjoining spaces, making ticking sounds on the metal floor, and stopped at the edge of the next blanket-wall where it repeated its blink routine, then scurried off again.
Sadia followed cautiously, room after scummy room. The final chamber, if it could be called that, was surprisingly clean. The covers on the mattress were tucked in and smoothed out. There were women’s shoes on the floor, set next to each other neatly. In the middle of the bed was a pizza box. The lid wasn’t quite closed. On top of the box, a paper square, centered, with the words “For Sadia” written on it in a tidy script.
Sadia’s thoughts raced. Had her contact left the box for her? Was that the reason for her not being here? Did her handler know?
The thought of pizza sent a flood of saliva into Sadia’s mouth, and her stomach growled. The customary aroma that accompanied pizza, however, was absent, and when she lifted the lid with the nose of the gun, there was some type of plastic toy inside instead.
In the same hand as the note on the top of the box, another note bore four words: “Dog, Cow, Horse, Cat.”
Sadia put the gun on the bed. The animals listed on the note were also on the toy, their pictures arranged around the center. All of the rest of the paper that had been stuck to the toy had been torn off, leaving only sticky white scraps. There was a pointer of sorts in the middle and a lever on the side. The pointer was already directed at the dog. Curious, she pulled the lever.
A scratchy sound emanated from the toy, then a man’s voice. “The dog says”—there was a pause—“you are being set up, Sadia.”
Sadia dropped the toy onto the bed and stepped back like she’d been bitten. She wanted to curse but the words wouldn’t even come. She looked around the space. Her handler had told her this would be a clean site. No chance of listening devices or any other electronics that would allow someone to interfere with her mission. The voice on the toy had called her by name somehow. And the voice was certainly not the voice of a female echo. The cockroach with the lights on its antennae was suspicious enough. This was even worse.
Looking around, she tried to spot the cockroach, but it had vanished. Tentatively, she picked the toy back up from the bed. She turned the pointer to the cow and pulled the lever again.
“The cow says . . . I am your friend and you need to trust me.”
“This is too . . .” Sadia stopped speaking; her own voice was strange to her ears, sounding hollow in the enclosed metal space. She hesitated, but only for a moment. She turned the pointer to the horse and pulled the lever.
“The horse says . . . follow the cockroach and you’ll see you’ve been betrayed.”
Betrayed?
Sadia felt a tingle of warning on the back of her neck. She refused to believe she was being betrayed. This was her first mission. Why would anyone want her to fail? Why would anyone betray her when she hadn’t done anything yet? She spun the pointer around to the cat and snapped the lever.
“The cat says . . . follow my directions if you want to know the truth, Sadia. Only the truth can save you.”
She dropped the toy back on the bed. This was stupid. Nobody was going to betray her. She had no reason to believe the pronouncements of a toy over the people who had reached out to her and offered her a chance to belong.
Only belonging would give her a chance to improve the hand...